by Sean Platt
But if The Beam was on the fritz (and, judging by Sam’s connection, it seemed to be), maybe security was as worthless as the locks that were supposed to be holding the doors closed.
Maybe the cops had run out.
Maybe the cyborgs who’d done this had run out, too.
Down the right-side hallway, toward the earlier gunshot, Sam heard someone screaming. He was about to head in that direction when a tremendous smashing boomed from the left. An invisible fishhook snagged his mind and pulled him toward it. Sam heard a familiar but not entirely welcome voice whisper into his inner ears:
He’s that way.
The voice seemed to be Integer7’s, talking to Sam through the flickering Beam rather than the handheld where someone kept trying to ping him. The one who’d humiliated Shadow at the Prime Statements, proving just how thin Sam Dial’s disguise truly was by appearing over and over — and who, if Sam had to guess, had something to do with all of this. That’s what the woman had implied, too, now that he thought about it.
From the direction of the booming noise, Sam heard voices: at least one woman’s and at least one man’s.
He’s that way. You have to warn him.
Warn him against what? Sam still wasn’t sure. If “he,” on Integer7’s virtual lips, still referred to Nicolai Costa, it was hard to imagine anything that Sam could warn him about at this point that could make any difference. There must still be warriors in the house. If Nicolai was facing them, he didn’t need warning.
Except that’s not what Sam had to warn Nicolai about.
And come to think of it, Sam wasn’t entirely sure what he needed to warn Nicolai about.
Except that it involved lies.
And deception.
And someone who’d told Nicolai to do something he shouldn’t do because it wouldn’t accomplish what Nicolai had been told and would instead…would instead…
But Sam had no idea what it would do instead. He’d lived through most of a day inside a hole, so it was possible he’d made headway a dozen times then been reset and forced to forget it all. It was possible the woman he’d seen inside had sneaked her way in repeatedly and told Sam what he was facing before he’d erased it.
…would instead…
He almost seemed to know. Something bad. Something Sam had to prevent, and that would happen if he didn’t stop it.
Sam moved forward, slowly. He could hear chatter. There were more than two people. Several men. Several women. One of the men sounded like Costa. Of that much, Sam felt certain.
“Just let me…” Sam said quietly, trying words on for size. It felt like he was speaking someone else’s words, as if he’d heard them without really noticing them. Or sensed them.
…would instead…
What would happen if Sam wasn’t there to stop it? The answer was close, a maddening itch. He had to know. He must, deep down. Because the woman he’d met had known, and they’d shared the hole for a while. The hole was mental, so their co-presence meant their minds must have blended. He and the woman had shared some of the same delusion. So he had to know, even if he didn’t know what he knew.
Just let me…
…would instead…
This is important. Just let me finish the…
…would instead…unlock something?
…just let me finish the upload.
Integer7, if it was Integer7, speaking to Sam through The Beam, through the hole, through the rip the microfragment may or may not have left inside Sam as he recovered.
The image of a key in a lock. A door swinging open.
The key was supposed to open a door. But now Sam could see it: it unlocked more than just the door it was meant to.
Demons. Ghosts. Sam’s nightmare imagery, interpreting real-life horrors.
His paralysis broke. Sam ran forward and was about to shout when the tableau stopped him dead in his tracks.
In the room ahead, the door blown asunder, Sam saw an armed man with two gray pigtails and a bandana.
He saw Nicolai Costa, with his arms raised in front of the weapon.
A tall woman and a short one.
And the girl. The girl Sam had last seen inside his mind.
“Just let me finish the upload,” Nicolai said to the man with the guns, his hands up and pacifying. “You’ll see. I’m not who you think I am.”
Sam understood.
His handheld, in his pocket, vibrated. It was silenced, but the vibration was audible to the man with the guns, who turned his head toward the new arrival.
Nicolai made to reach for the man’s weapons, but he was too far away.
Both weapons discharged as the old man’s head turned. There was no kick.
The tremendous blast struck Nicolai Costa in the chest.
“Stop the upload,” Sam stammered at the two women, at the girl from his hallucination. “Break the connection. Hurry.”
The gray-haired man turned toward Sam.
And charged.
Chapter Eleven
The first blast from the huge apartment’s other end almost broke Natasha’s hypnosis. The second broke it more. This time, she could make sense of a few of the distant shouts. But for some reason, the closer cries were harder to understand. Everything was fragments of sight and sound.
I’m in the Viazo. I’m on The Beam. None of this is real.
And it shouldn’t be. None of it should be. Things like this didn’t happen in real life…except she knew that was wrong because things like this seemed to happen to Natasha Ryan a lot lately. When she’d begun singing, she’d done it to survive. Via Persephone had started her star rising, and by the time she’d released its sequel, she was supposed to be untouchable. Back then, there had barely been a middle class. After the Fall, there’d been only rich and poor. Until Crossbrace, the chasm had been enormous. Natasha had caught the shirttail of rich and left poor behind, determined never to return. Life was supposed to be champagne and fancy gowns from then on.
She’d had both. But she’d also had the Aphora riot. The Sap riot, from which Isaac had saved her even though he’d got her into it in the first place. And now he’d saved her again.
“Natasha. We have to go.”
Natasha shook him off. It didn’t matter that the first time had been a lie. This time, it wasn’t. Maybe Isaac had staged the riot. She’d orchestrated plenty of things herself. She’d cast her stones, and he’d cast his. They’d been through a lot. It didn’t change this moment. Except that this moment changed everything.
“Natasha.”
Gentle. His voice was soft, almost patronizing. The way you talk to a crazy person. Above her, the two workmen still had the gunman pinned. One of them had hit him, but it hadn’t seemed to faze the half-metal man. So the workman with the gun had shot him instead. That had slowed him a little. Enough to pin him anyway, and it was still undecided if the shooter would be shot again.
“Go,” the first workman said. “We’ll hold him.”
“Don’t hold him,” Natasha said.
“I’m not letting him go. Don’t worry.” The man held a gun on the big, half-machine assailant. He looked like a parody of 2040s enhancement. It was as if someone had pulled iron plates from a junkyard and used them to build this man armor and a weapon. He was wearing a faceplate, but the thing had been knocked aside when the second workman had elbowed him in the face. The big armored man seemed confused now that his processor had taken a shot, but he could stir at any moment. And in that moment, they both needed to go.
“Natasha.”
“I said don’t hold him.”
“Natasha. We have to go. He’s…” Micah gave an almost-regretful sigh, as if he weren’t a hypocrite. “He’s gone.”
Natasha came to her feet. Her heels were still on below her red-stained lower legs, and she felt steady in them. Because this wasn’t real. Isaac wasn’t dead. Not yet he wasn’t.
“Let him go,” she said to the workman pinning the big man’s arm.
Micah again took
her, this time by the wrist. She shook him away then slapped the workman hard across the face.
“Natasha!”
Instead of turning to Micah, she hit the man again. And again. His hands came up. Off the man he was trying to pin. His weapon spun on its trigger guard, swinging on his index finger like a kid on a swing. Natasha hit him again and snatched the small gun. She had no idea what it did since her head had been turned when it had been fired the first time. But she knew the basic pieces, and that at point-blank, just about anything was deadly.
“Natasha, don’t — ” Micah shouted, lunging, his legs tangling on Isaac’s body, his waving arms meeting the workmen’s rather than hers. He gave Natasha plenty of time to shove the tiny firearm into a soft spot under the armor across the chest of her husband’s murderer. And to pull the trigger.
The report was small — some sort of nano-weapon, probably, driven more by flying bots than powder. But the effect was big. Natasha felt her bare neck and shoulders splattered with something warm as she blinked against incoming gore. Then the big bag of meat sagged to the ground. She let it go, finding a large dent in a Plasteel-reinforced wall behind, its cavity painted red.
She dropped the weapon.
“We have to take him with us,” Natasha said, looking down.
“It’s done. Let’s go.”
“We have to take him!” She pushed away from Micah and became a storm of fists and feet, punching and kicking her stupid brother-in-law everywhere she could reach. Her stupid brother-in-law who’d pulled Isaac into this, who’d dragged him where he was never supposed to be. This was an Enterprise event; this was an Enterprise man’s home; Isaac had wanted to leave; he’d wanted to flee with Natasha and never come here, never have had to save her for real, never have needed to prove, now that it was too late, that he’d always —
Natasha’s head rocked as Micah struck her, hard.
She was still dimly aware when she tipped against his shoulder then mostly blacked out by the time he lifted her feet from the floor.
And after that, for long enough, she was gone and knew nothing.
Chapter Twelve
The overhead lights seemed too bright, with torture inside him. The worst of the white-hot pain bled across his chest, but his arms were on fire, too.
Nicolai blinked from his position on the floor. There was something going on across the room. Instinct told him to keep his movements small, so he rolled his head only slightly — just enough to see the scuffed shoes of a man near the doorway, wearing blue jeans with something crusted in a streak down one leg — maybe dried blood, maybe dirt. Scrolling up, Nicolai could see his gray hair, in pigtails. He was wearing a rainbow-colored headband, of all things. Like an Organa. Then Nicolai remembered: that was the man who’d shot him.
He still was threatening two or three people — Kate and Kai, who’d backed into a corner, plus Sam Dial, a bit down the hallway — with what had to be a weapon. Nicolai couldn’t tell for sure; the man’s back was turned.
There was a girl in the corner whom the gunman almost didn’t seem to have noticed, in her late teens or early twenties. Unlike Kate, Kai, and Sam, the girl didn’t look afraid at all. As Nicolai watched her from his back, head tipped just enough to look around, the girl came slowly to her knees and crawled toward him like a child.
“So you’re him,” she said softly.
Nicolai tried to reply but couldn’t. He had to be dead. She had to be an angel because she’d crawled directly through a chair on her way to him. And he’d been shot full in the chest by two weapons that felt like they must have unloaded the force of a jackhammer. He could still see Sam, his hands raised in surrender. Sam certainly seemed to think the gray-haired man’s weapon was worth fearing.
“Can’t you talk?” the girl whispered.
Nicolai rolled his eyes toward the door. Maybe he shouldn’t talk even if he could. This looked like a standoff in progress — one he’d recently been part of. Although maybe it didn’t matter. Everyone at the door was shouting. They wouldn’t hear these whispers anyway.
Nicolai tried to move his mouth, but no words came. He had no breath. So he raised his neck and looked down at his chest, sure that he’d see a gaping hole. His chest didn’t disappoint. His jacket and dress shirt were both shredded enough that neither qualified as a garment. Beneath that was only blood, and what looked like scraps of skin.
“I guess it wasn’t done with you,” the girl whispered, following Nicolai’s eyes. Except that where Nicolai saw ruin, she seemed to see hope. As if his chest hadn’t been…
Well, it hadn’t been scooped out, which was where that thought had been going. It hurt like hell and was a mess of blood and flesh, but his chest still seemed to be there. No hole at all.
Nicolai touched his abdomen. Instead of encountering familiar skin, Nicolai’s fingers slid across something smooth and hard. Almost as if someone had installed a new enhancement without his knowledge. Or as if it had grown there.
“What wasn’t done with me?” he managed to ask.
The girl smiled. “The Beam.”
Nicolai’s fingers were still trailing over his chest. He wiped away the scraps of skin and clothing, starting to see the thing there for what it was: a thin, flexible, apparently impenetrable suit of armor. Only instead of wearing this body armor under his shirt, Nicolai had been wearing it under his skin.
“Hurts.”
The girl nodded. But as the seconds ticked by, it seemed to be hurting less. If he wiped away the blood, he could see the armor’s strange gray color replaced by a blushing peach. It must be nanobots at work — far better and faster ones than Nicolai ever remembered having injected.
“I don’t remember much,” the girl said, still kneeling over him. “But I know it plays favorites.”
“What?”
This time she rolled her eyes a little and repeated, “The Beam.”
Nicolai tried to slow his breathing. Tried to slow his pounding heart — which, thanks to the strange new armor, was quite unharmed. He thought of the slowly diminishing pain. He thought of how he should try to help the others, if he could figure out how to move again. He thought for some reason of Europe, of his trip through the Chunnel, of the way his scrubbers had somehow come back to life after they should have been long dead. How his Doodad had never run dry despite its ancient battery. How the Doodad, according to Micah Ryan, had called satellites and left a footprint for others to follow. How that old gyro car had somehow started outside Amsterdam when it had no business doing so. How time after time, despite impossible odds, Nicolai had always miraculously managed to stay alive, as if he’d had a guardian angel. Or maybe a trillion of them.
He came to his elbows. In the doorway, Sam Dial was shouting at the gray-haired man, pointing past Nicolai’s position and toward Craig Braemon’s desk. Sam sounded panicked — but not, interestingly, panicked by the weapon that Nicolai had to assume was leveled at his chest. And it wasn’t usual Sam panic, either. He sounded scared but coherent. Not Beamsick at all.
In the corner, Kai had turned to look at Nicolai. Her eyes were wide. She flicked them away, but Kate had already seen. Kate’s disbelieving expression was less discreet.
As Nicolai sat up farther, his torso ran into the girl’s swinging blonde hair and went right through it. He had to move quickly. Right now, the assailant was focusing on Sam. He was alone; the other people who’d stormed the party must have fled, possibly back through their entry hole. Nicolai was behind the gunman — and based on Kate’s expression, he was probably supposed to be dead.
He could do this. He could do something.
“You have to stop the upload!” Sam was shouting, still pointing. “Shoot me; I don’t give a shit! Just stop it first!”
The man wasn’t listening. He took a step, saying nothing.
“One of you, do something!”
But Kate was still looking directly at Nicolai, who’d made it to his knees then into a hesitant squat. His skin must be knitting; most
of the pain had gone, leaving only his concussive shortness of breath. Sam saw Kate’s gaze and looked right at Nicolai. And the gray-braided man —
Oh, shit; the man was turning his head.
There was nothing to use against him. The weapon Kate had snatched from the wall was nowhere to be seen; it must have turned out as useless as Nicolai figured. Craig Braemon had an otherwise weapon-free office. Nicolai couldn’t even hit him with anything. He didn’t trust his muscles much yet and saw nothing heavy. Nothing he could grab in the two seconds it took for the man to turn around.
Sam tried for the man’s back, but the minute he touched the assassin’s skin, he jerked as if electrocuted, then leaped back. The man had come prepared. There simply wasn’t time, without armament, to riddle around his defenses.
He was holding two weapons. Both came up — not to Nicolai’s chest this time, but to his head. Nicolai wondered if he’d grown a second skull, too. Not that it mattered. Once the man fired, he’d no longer have a face.
“York,” he said.
“My name is Nicolai Costa.” He raised his hands, palms forward, at his shoulders.
But the man wasn’t interested in talking, or in giving anyone time for improv or debate. Both index fingers depressed triggers.
But this time, nothing happened.
The assassin looked at the weapons. He shook them then tried again. Again, both failed to fire. Finally, he tossed them aside and came forward with his hands up, fingers curled, some sort of enhancement whirring beneath his skin.
From Nicolai’s side, Kai gasped. At almost the same time, he heard a sharp metallic sound, like that of a sword being rapidly drawn from a scabbard.
Nicolai pulled his attention from the advancing man for long enough to turn his head. The old man did the same. And they both found themselves staring as a floating metal ball — one that had just now grown spikes — moved closer.
